Statistics of Corona Virus in Turkey

As the world mitigates the pandemic, countries are in a dillemma to open to international market or even ease domestic restrictions. Most countries have strict rules and are closed to high risk countries. Perhaps the indicatior for this risk is the pandemic level and the delta corona virus variant, which has spread rapidly and caused fears among us all. However, the vaccination rates have caused this delta variant to slow down in most countries, if not all. This blog discusses the pandemic and the Delta strain in Turkey.

Turkey is undoubtedly a great country and ranks among the top tourist destinations in the world and known for its historical sites and beach side resorts along the Mediterranean coast. Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul has a number of major attractions derived from its historical status as capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. The recent pandemic and the travel restrictions including the quarantine requirements have affected the tourism and arrivals in Turkey.The video below has information about its plan to revive tourism.

Data description

Overview of the Covid data

The Covid-19 data for this blog post is the contribution of Our World in Data who update their GitHub repository everyday with covid data from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE). The data is a representation of the time series data where every record is a day of the year and represents the statistics of the corona virus cases, deaths and vaccinations, both fresh and cumulative. Additional, country specific statistics are also present in the data and has 65 variables for 555 days beginning from from 2020-03-11.

Analysis and findings

The time series graphs below represent the number of fresh cases and deaths in Turkey over the period of the recorded data from February, 2020. You can hover over the plot to see the exact number. The cases and the deaths due to corona virus have been rising and falling in a regular manner. The peaks were in December 2019 and April 2021 when the cases rose to substantial levels. The pandemic levels are on the rise now.

In the early days, the ratio between the cases and the deaths was wide, however it has come closer in these recent times. This is the general trend in populous countries where there are more deaths when cases are on the peak, owing to lack of access to emergency health care services.

Vaccination

The vaccination roll out plan in Turkey began in the February 2021 with the approved vaccines Sinovac and Pfizer/BioNTech, Sinovac being made available for the people. It is can be observed that the race between the first vaccine and second vaccine is predominant, where the first and second dose lead alternatively. For example, in June 2021 the first vaccinations are higher than the second vaccinations and in the following months, the second vaccinations lead. This suggests that the groups of people take the vaccination. For example, if a group of people take their first vaccine in February 2021, the same group take their second vaccine in March, 2021. This suugests the hesitancy of people to take up the vaccine. Ideally, the number of first doses must be more than the second doses until atleast half the population is vaccinated with their first dose.

In June 2021, we see a wider gap between the first and second dose which describes the acceptance of the vaccine by the people and the total vaccinations also becomes steeper from this point.

Figure 1: Cumulative Vacination

The vaccination percentage of the total population of Turkey for the first and second doze is shown in the animated plot below. The current vaccination percentage stands at 61.52% for first doze and 48.72% for the second doze.

The interactive table below shows the exact number of cases and deaths in each month and the trend within each month. The highest number of cases recorded in August 2021 are highlighted in red.

Now, we analyze the corona virus variants in Turkey. The first and basic visualisation to check the distribution of the variants is a bar plot. The variants are plotted on a bar chart and we find that the delta variant is the most common infection in Turkey. “The Delta variant is a variant of concern that WHO is tracking and monitoring around the world. It’s a variant of concern because we know it has increased transmissibility. This has been demonstrated by several countries. And we know that where the Delta variant is identified, it really rapidly takes off and spreads between people more efficiently than even the Alpha variant that was first detected around December, January 2021. As of today, the Delta variant has been reported in 96 countries and we expect that the Delta variant will continue to spread.” ~ Dr Maria Van Kerkhove

Now, the first occurrence of the delta strain is identified and its relation with the increase in the number of cases will be discussed. The spread of the delta variant is super fast and it is proved by data in the plot below. The first occurence the delta variant in Turkey was in May 2021. The spread of it is so fast that, in August almost all of the cases are attributed to the delta variant.

Thus in all, I would say that the vaccination rate causes the infection rate to slow down. However, the neglected attitude of people and the hesitancy to take the vaccine has caused this pandemic to disturb normal life for longer times. The restrictions and other regulations have most definitely allowed us this time to face this pandemic in a stringer manner to avoid more deaths. Therefore, please get vaccinated and stay safe.